Friday, April 6, 2018

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- The Hart Trophy debate gets complicated
- The NHL makes small progress in the replay review mess
- An obscure player from one of my favorite 1980s teams
- The week's three comedy stars make me worry for Winnipeg
- And a look back at the selection of the Sedins at the 1999 draft

4 comments:

I'm disappointed that you didn't mention that one of the referees adjudicating the Korn-Curran fight was apparently Kerry Fraser! This is an obvious instance of Fraser's lifelong, fanatical, and unrelenting anti-Maple Leafs bias that wouldn't become apparent until three years later.

You love repeating how if Stefan hadn’t missed the net, the Oilers would have drafted Patrick Kane. It was worth a chuckle the first time, but you’ve mentioned it about twenty times now, and I’m worried that you actually believe it. Thus I feel it necessary to debunk it.

Stefan missed the net on January 4th. The draft lottery was held on April 10th. That’s more than three months of world events which could have led to a different outcome. If Stefan had scored and the Oilers had lost in regulation, maybe they would have been more demoralized the next night in Vancouver and failed to force overtime there, lost a point and ended up back where they ended up finishing anyway.

But let’s assume that the remainder of the Oilers’ season would go unchanged. Does that mean that they’d have won the lottery? Not necessarily, because chaos theory will tell you that an infinite number of factors determine how lottery balls fall, and an alternate universe results in different lottery balls falling.

But let’s assume that the Oilers did win the lottery and drafted Patrick Kane. Would he have developed into the player that he did as a Blackhawk? Or would he have developed more like all the other 1st overall picks that have suffered in Edmonton’s system?

But let’s assume that he would have developed just as he did in Chicago. Would that have made the Oilers a good team? He’s not a better player than Connor McDavid. If McDavid (not to mention a bunch of other 1st overall picks) can’t make the Oilers a good team, then what’s so special about Patrick Kane?

In summary, just because the Oilers would have lost in regulation doesn’t mean that their win-loss record from then on wouldn’t have otherwise changed. And even if it wouldn’t, that doesn’t mean that they would have won the lottery. And even if they had, that doesn’t mean that Patrick Kane would have developed into the player that he did in Chicago. And even if he did, that doesn’t mean that the Oilers would be any good.